“The Sound of Music,” as the film was called, was one of those old movies that kind of captivated a day and age, a day and age when people had large families and when mothers would actually stay at home to look after their children. It also pointed out that being a mother and staying at home and looking after the children was a whole ministry in itself, a full-time job in itself. As I remember the story in the film which starred Julie Andrews who was playing the role of a young woman who was looking for her calling and ministry in life and was doing as a lot of us do at a young age or even an older age, trying to find our dream. The story goes that she joined a monastery and became a nun but the picture you get from watching the film is that she was a kind of a misfit and didn’t really fit in there and that she eventually found her dream when she left the monastery and became a mother looking after a large family. She’d fallen in love and found family life more appealing than life in the monastery.

The problem we have these days is that large families for one, are considered backward, you hear phrases that people use like: the baby boom generation for instance, phrases like this telling us that having a large family is quite backward and irresponsible and old-fashioned and more in place with an older generation and out of place in the modern world and with the upcoming generation. It is more natural these days, according to the modern world, to not be a mother who stays at home. According to the modern world, mothers are supposed to relinquish themselves of the responsibility of looking after children and therefore they need to find money which the government is sometimes all too willing to offer them to put their children into childcare as early as possible meaning anything from one year and up – or even earlier! You get the impression these days that this is the most natural thing in the world but clearly this in not what God intended for us all as in Psalm 127:3 it says “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.” When we read this verse in Psalm 127:3 we see that LORD is capitalised, this placing great emphasis on the wonderful fact that children come from God, from Jesus, and are given to us as a gift and for us to cherish and have as our own and to be looked after by us – the child’s parents – and NOT to be dumped off onto somebody else.

The picture you get these days is that society doesn’t want mothers and fathers to look after their own children; society knows that in the first five years of a child’s life that that child will learn more in those early years than he will in the rest of his life. This bringing another verse into play, Proverbs 22:6 written by wise King Solomon who said, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” I think that there are a lot of would-be mothers out there in society who will never find their dream, who will never find fulfilment in all the other things that they are taught to pursue by society. God intended for both men and women to have an inborn vision and an inborn dream and a longing to have their own children and to be naturally affectionate towards those children and to raise them up to be good people and to have good morals and to show them by example the way God would want them to be and to show them that family is important, that having children is important, that they too will one day grow up, get married and have children of their own and look after them themselves and that there is a whole ministry right there in looking after children; this being true also as teaching them to be good examples to others and to everybody they meet and showing them the love of God by both word and deed and so we all spread the Love of Jesus this way which can so truly start at home from a very young age.

Society has got it all wrong! It doesn’t want us to give a Christian example to our children, they are stealing our children away from us from a very young age and they are all being collectively thrown into cages called nurseries and childcare settings. The problem with this is that children will now grow up to believe that this is the natural way and they too will grow up and put their children into childcare also so yes, The Sound of Music may be a very old film but it did have some good values and a good message: the message of falling in love and inheriting precious children and considering this to be your calling in life from God Himself, a ministry in life from God Himself, a high-calling in life from God Himself! “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward” – Given to you to teach them your ways which should be God’s ways, to follow your example which should be God’s example and to give them your love which should be God’s Love in the Love of Jesus!

In a lot of ways, this is what the fighting should be all about. Presently the whole world finds itself in a kind of a war of words – the truth of the whole matter is is that we should be struggling and fighting if you like to make this world a better place, to both love God and love each other. We are all children of God and God’s vision for all of His children is that we all need to grow up and to consider ourselves as part of the great family of God and a family of love, loving God and loving each other and teaching our children to do the same!